Recommendations based on "Getting Past the Pain Between Us Healing and Reconciliation Without Compromise"

When you love someone, how does it feel? And when you desire someone, how is it different?In Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel looks at the story of sex in committed couples. Modern romance promises it all - a lifetime of togetherness, intimacy and erotic desire. In reality, it's hard to want what you already have. Our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. And often, the very thing that got us to into our relationships - lust - is the one thing that goes missing from them.Determined to reconcile the erotic and the domestic, Perel explains why democracy is a passion killer in the bedroom. Argues for playfulness, distance, and uncertainty. And shows what it takes to bring lust home. Smart, sexy and explosively original, Mating in Captivity is the monogamist's essential bedside read.

"A fresh look at infidelity, broadening the focus from the havoc it wreaks within a committed relationship to consider also why people do it, what it means to them, and why breaking up is the expected response to duplicity — but not necessarily the wisest one.” — LA Review of BooksFrom iconic couples’ therapist and bestselling author of Mating in Captivity comes a provocative and controversial look at infidelity with practical, honest, and empathetic advice for how to move beyond it.An affair: it can rob a couple of their relationship, their happiness, their very identity. And yet, this extremely common human experience is so poorly understood. What are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced? Why do people cheat—even those in happy marriages? Why does an affair hurt so much? When we say infidelity, what exactly do we mean? Do our romantic expectations of marriage set us up for betrayal? Is there such a thing as an affair-proof marriage? Is it possible to love more than one person at once? Can an affair ever help a marriage? Perel weaves real-life case stories with incisive psychological and cultural analysis in this fast-paced and compelling book.For the past ten years, Perel has traveled the globe and worked with hundreds of couples who have grappled with infidelity. Betrayal hurts, she writes, but it can be healed. An affair can even be the doorway to a new marriage—with the same person. With the right approach, couples can grow and learn from these tumultuous experiences, together or apart.Affairs, she argues, have a lot to teach us about modern relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They offer a unique window into our personal and cultural attitudes about love, lust, and commitment. Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, Perel invites readers into an honest, enlightened, and entertaining exploration of modern marriage in its many variations.Fiercely intelligent, The State of Affairs provides a daring framework for understanding the intricacies of love and desire. As Perel observes, “Love is messy; infidelity more so. But it is also a window, like no other, into the crevices of the human heart.”

There is no one way to be transgender. Transgender and gender non-conforming people have many different ways of understanding their gender identities. Only recently have sex and gender been thought of as separate concepts, and we have learned that sex (traditionally thought of as physical or biological) is as variable as gender (traditionally thought of as social). While trans people share many common experiences, there is immense diversity within trans communities. There are an estimated 700,000 transgendered individuals in the US and 15 million worldwide. Even still, there's been a notable lack of organized information for this sizable group. Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a revolutionary resource-a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for transgender people, with each chapter written by transgender or genderqueer authors. Inspired by Our Bodies, Ourselves, the classic and powerful compendium written for and by women, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is widely accessible to the transgender population, providing authoritative information in an inclusive and respectful way and representing the collective knowledge base of dozens of influential experts. Each chapter takes the reader through an important transgender issue, such as race, religion, employment, medical and surgical transition, mental health topics, relationships, sexuality, parenthood, arts and culture, and many more. Anonymous quotes and testimonials from transgender people who have been surveyed about their experiences are woven throughout, adding compelling, personal voices to every page. In this unique way, hundreds of viewpoints from throughout the community have united to create this strong and pioneering book. It is a welcoming place for transgender and gender-questioning people, their partners and families, students, professors, guidance counselors, and others to look for up-to-date information on transgender life.

'This book feels so hopeful because it's direct, it's really honest, and it's so actionable' Brené Brown______What makes love last? Why do some couples stay together forever, while others fall apart? Is there a formula for building a love that lasts? How can you revive and renew your relationship in just seven days?For the past fifty years, Drs. John and Julie Gottman have been studying love. The Seven-Day Love Prescription distils their work into an accessible, bite-size, seven-day action plan for deeper intimacy. Taking you through their most foundational findings, the Gottmans will help you build a love that lasts in just seven days. Through small, immediately actionable daily steps, they will help you to shift your relationship for the better, providing trusted antidotes to common issues from loneliness and emotional and physical disconnection, to drifting apart and losing that loving feeling. These will teach you how to:· Connect and check in with each other· Ask each other big, open-ended questions· Show appreciation and gratitude by saying thank you· Give your partner a genuine compliment· Communicate what you need· Create moments of physical connection· Declare a date nightNo matter who you are, or what kind of relationship you want to strengthen, The Seven-Day Love Prescription is guaranteed to provide you with the practical tools to transform any relationship in your life for the better. The Gottmans prove that small frequent changes over just seven days can strengthen the foundations of all relationships, allow them to flourish, and create big, long-lasting change over time.______'There isn't a marriage or romantic partnership out there that won't benefit from this book' New York Journal of Books

Erotic Transference and Countertransference brings together, for the first time, contemporary views on how psychotherapists and analysts work with and think about the erotic in therapeutic practice. Representing a broad spectrum of psychoanalytic perspectives, including object relations, Kleinian, Jungian and Lacanian thought, the contributors highlight similarities and differences in their approaches to the erotic in transference and countertransference, ranging from love and sexual desire to perverse and psychotic manifestations. Erotic Transferenceand Countertransference offers ways of understanding the erotic which should prove both useful and thought-provoking.

Heralded by the New York Times and Time magazine as the couple therapy with the highest rate of success, Emotionally Focused Therapy works because it views the love relationship as an attachment bond. This idea, once controversial, is now supported by science, and has become widely popular among therapists around the world. In HOLD ME TIGHT, Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson teaches that the way to save and enrich a relationship is to reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship-from Recognizing the Demon Dialogue to Revisiting a Rocky Moment-and uses them as touchpoints for seven healing conversations. Through case studies from her practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships and ensure a lifetime of love.

A practical guide to better communication that will break the blackmail cycle for good, by one of the nation's leading therapists, Susan Forward.“Breathe a sigh of relief! Susan Forward helps you identify and correct an intensely destructive and confusing pattern of relating with those you love. I highly recommend this important book!"—Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway"If you really loved me...""After all I've done for you...""How can you be so selfish..."Do any of the above sound familiar? They're all examples of emotional blackmail, a powerful form of manipulation in which people close to us threaten to punish us for not doing what they want. Emotional blackmailers know how much we value our relationships with them. They know our vulnerabilities and our deepest secrets. They are our mothers, our partners, our bosses and coworkers, our friends and our lovers. And no matter how much they care about us, they use this intimate knowledge to give themselves the payoff they want: our compliance.Susan Forward knows what pushes our hot buttons. Just as John Gray illuminates the communications gap between the sexes in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Harriet Lerner describes an intricate dynamic in The Dance of Anger, so Susan Forward presents the anatomy of a relationship damaged by manipulation, and gives readers an arsenal of tools to fight back.

The classic text on the history of attachment theory and its impact on the field of child development, now in a fully expanded and updated edition.A century ago, leading childcare experts were miles apart in their recommendations to parents. Behaviorists warned against spoiling children with too much affection ("Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap") whereas geneticists argued that affection matters little because our genes alone determine who we are. Into this fray in the late 1930s stepped John Bowlby, the British psychoanalyst whose work with psychologist Mary Ainsworth would overturn the world of child development and shape its trajectory for the next 70 years.Becoming Attached tells the story of one of the great undertakings of modern psychology: the hundred-year quest to understand what children need and what constitutes good parenting. In this expanded and fully updated new edition, psychotherapist and journalist Robert Karen chronicles the origin of a groundbreaking idea - attachment theory - and its resounding impact on the fields of developmental psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Karen charts the historic course of attachment theory as it gained notoriety and support-and not a little controversy. Do "securely attached" children fare better as adults than "insecurely attached" ones? What do children truly need to thrive? Can babies handle prolonged separations? Presenting the origin story of an important idea in child development, this new edition also reveals how attachment research has exploded worldwide in the past several years as evidence for the benefits of secure attachment continue to grow. Karen explores the cutting-edge science examining the relationship between infants and their caregivers - such as the hidden world of synchronized play, fMRI studies that reveal neural patterns of parental and receptive love, and the link between attachment and genetics, wherein early experience changes the expression of genes. Karen also tells a dramatic story of scientists at work and at war, what happens when a theory such as attachment becomes complicated by political and economic pressures, and how its entanglement with gender roles and equity in the workforce continue to overshadow research to this day. Karen shares anecdotes drawn from his own practice to illuminate the challenges many adults face in overcoming insecurities that may originate in infancy and childhood, and how resulting harmful relationship patterns may be quashed.Cementing its place as a classic text of child development and its rich history, Becoming Attached has much to say about both child and adult life, as readers will find it impossible to read without reflecting on their own lives as children, parents, and intimate partners in love or marriage.

Why are women's friendships so deep yet so fragile? Friendship coach and educator Danielle Bayard Jackson unpacks the latest research about women's cooperation and communication, while sharing practical strategies to preserve and strengthen these relationships. Fighting for Our Friendships is one part textbook, one part handbook. Readers will not only learn what the latest research has to say about the mechanics of women's friendships, but they'll walk away with real-life solutions for the most common conflicts that arise in their platonic relationships.   Using a combination of psychology, science, narrative, and a few of the author's signature scripts and out-of-the-box exercises, readers will learn: The three "affinities" that bring women together (and tear them apart) Scripts to navigate nine of the most challenging "friend types" (and how to know which one you are) The covert strategies women use to hurt each other (and how to avoid them) How to have a hard conversation with a friend (without losing the friendship) Surprising ways that women's people-pleasing delays platonic intimacy (and how to stop it) How to know if a friendship is worth saving (and what to do to recover) How to make (and deepen!)  connections with other women   In a time when we are often encouraged to opt out of friendships at any sign of friction, Danielle Bayard Jackson is showing us how to opt in.  

Having clear boundaries is essential to a healthy, balanced lifestyle. A boundary is a personal property line that marks those things for which we are responsible. In other words, boundaries define who we are and who we are not. Boundaries impact all areas of our lives: Physical boundaries help us determine who may touch us and under what circumstances -- Mental boundaries give us the freedom to have our own thoughts and opinions -- Emotional boundaries help us to deal with our own emotions and disengage from the harmful, manipulative emotions of others -- Spiritual boundaries help us to distinguish God's will from our own and give us renewed awe for our Creator -- Often, Christians focus so much on being loving and unselfish that they forget their own limits and limitations. When confronted with their lack of boundaries, they ask: - Can I set limits and still be a loving person? - What are legitimate boundaries? - What if someone is upset or hurt by my boundaries? - How do I answer someone who wants my time, love, energy, or money? - Aren't boundaries selfish? - Why do I feel guilty or afraid when I consider setting boundaries? Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend offer biblically-based answers to these and other tough questions, showing us how to set healthy boundaries with our parents, spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and even ourselves.